When I think back to the younger version of me, the one who was a mediocre
science student at best, it kind of boggles my mind that I’ve ended up where I
have.

The last science class I remember enjoying was seventh grade. My teacher
was a really cool hippie-lady. She taught us the dangers of smoking (yuck), we
dissected frogs (cool), and she told us how hot dogs were made (I haven’t eaten
one since).

Something happened after seventh grade, though. While I always found
dissection fascinating, overall I lost my interest in science. I think
somewhere along the way I learned (or decided) that I wasn’t good at it. There
may have also been a tinge of “science isn’t a girl thing” in there as well. I
don’t know if all that originated from me or my teachers, but there was a
disconnect between me and the science I was learning.

What I never lost, though, was my love of science fiction.

Growing up, my brother and I spent Saturday mornings watching Science
Fiction Theater, The World Beyond, and the best science fiction B movies ever
made. Zanti. Them. Godzilla vs. Mothra. I swear I’ve seen every Twilight Zone
episode made. My favorite, though, was The Time Machine. That movie rocked my
world. My ten year old brain gobbled it all up and began spinning daydreamed
stories of my own.

It wasn’t only movies and television shows, though. I loved science fiction
books, too. I grew up a voracious reader (still am, actually). Time travel
stories, or anything involving portals to other worlds were my favorite.

Despite this, when I set out to write and publish, I never imagined my
first book—or really any of my books—would be science fiction. That genre felt
out of my league. Reserved for authors who majored in chemistry or scored high
on the “thinking” category of the Myers Briggs Test. (For the record, I was an
English major, and my Myers Briggs T score is super low.)

When I decided to pursue writing, though, I wrote the stories that came to
me. All them had an element of odd. Ghost stories. Creepy stories. Monsters.
Supernatural beings. And then, there was this story that showed up one day. A
story about a boy who woke up in a classroom and didn’t know where he was or
how he got there. He recognized the girl next to him, though. Recognized her
from his world.

I kept writing that story, following it to its conclusion, and before long
I’d written my first science fiction novel.

After a few years of revisions, I signed with an agent, and that agent sold
the novel to Katherine Harrison at Knopf.

Early on Katherine and I agreed that we wanted the science in NOW THAT
YOU’RE HERE to be solid. We didn’t want readers to easily dismiss it. We wanted
it to hold up under scrutiny. This was a pretty tall order for someone like me,
someone so mediocre at science.

Or was it?

Around 2007 I started hearing about this ginormous apparatus deep beneath
the Swiss Alps that would answer all the questions of the universe…or create a
black hole and swallow up the earth. Black hole? That certainly caught my
attention. I started reading up on black holes, time travel, multiverses. I
watched shows on the Discovery Channel, and clips on YouTube trying to wrap my
brain around quantum physics and string theory. I developed a love for science
again. All of that fascinating information sank into my subconscious, just
waiting for a spark. Waiting for NOW THAT YOU’RE HERE. Then, boom. My imagination went into
overdrive, igniting like it’s own kind of particle collider.

When I set out to research how a boy could possibly jump between parallel
universes, that seemingly daunting task turned out to be a lot of fun. Work,
sure. It required hours of reading books and scientific articles, looking for
just the right theory to fit my story. But like a puzzle, all of the pieces
came together to form a bridge from real-life science to the science in my
fiction.

I can’t go into a lot of detail about what that science is, or how it
works, without giving away major spoilers about the book. But I can share with
you what reviewers have said about it. School
Library Journal said, “Nichols adeptly simplifies the complex concepts of
string theory and parallel universes without condescending to readers.” VOYA said
“in particular, science buffs will
enjoy the speculative theories put forward.”

Amy K. Nichols lives on the edge of the Phoenix desert with
her husband and children. In the evenings, she enjoys sitting outside, counting
bats and naming stars. Sometimes she names the bats. NOW THAT YOU’RE HERE is
her first novel. Visit her online at amyknichols.com.

The League of Extraordinary Writers is a group of debut YA authors who write science fiction and dystopian works. The ten of us have works that run the gamut of near-future mind control to far-future space travel, but they do have one thing in common: a future where the Earth we know now is twisted, gone.

3 comments:

I absolutely love the main character, Evee. The author did a great deal creating a strong female character. The alternating viewpoints of other characters is also a great tool to really build the mystery and suspense. I can't recommend this book enough! I can't wait to read the next installment!

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